OTTAWA: The Canadian Chamber of Commerce has released a list of ways to improve the economic success in our country, titled Ten Ways to Build a Canada that Wins. President of the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce Janet Riopel told the Alberta Morning News, what’s standing in Canada’s way. “We can price ourselves right out of the market with very expensive carbon taxes, with global protectionism that sort of pushes us out. We can be uneducated, we can have businesses that just don’t know how to work with world markets and then really take on the world.” One of the things on the list, is fighting global protectionism, particularly those opposing the recently approved Canada-European Trade Agreement.
Riopel countered, CETA will open other markets for business. “We have tremendous signs still of uncertainty and even unpredictability from our partner to the south, the United States is our largest trading partner. So, we really need to look for other opportunities that are beyond our boundaries with other partners and I think CETA opens that up.” Some of the other items on the list include, build digital skills to compete in the new talent economy, build Canada’s brand and grow small business to take on the world.
The list also encourages the government to make trade between the provinces and territories easier. “That’s going to create internal economic growth and job creation that we very much need,” Riopell said. “The Edmonton Chamber’s been a long-time advocate of this, of freeing up internal trade. There’s a wide variety of estimates on what that would do, but it’s always in the tens of billions of dollars of impact.” The list was made with input from all the chambers from across Canada to help the country remain competitive in the global market.
